It’s December 16th or 17th, 2024. This pen has dried up and is too scratchy.
Did I fix it?
Whatever. There we go.
I have not been doing much writing these days, no writing for sharing. All writing just for me, because I am writing nearly every day. But I haven’t written a piece in months, and I am inspired to write one now, with so many topics and themes and developments I’ve been stewing on, and I just picked up Hamilton, by Ron Chernow, last night, and for some reason that’s inspiring me. Maybe because Hamilton was a prolific writer and reading his writings about his life makes me want to write about mine. It’s generally a good thing to do, and I have mostly not ever regretted taking the time to really go for it and write about anything. So here we are again.
In a way, it’s like writing a letter to a friend, but that friend is myself, but also whoever wants to read this, because for some reason I like to share this kind of thing. Well, that’s what blogging is. A lot of people do this.
Here’s the status report.
Starting small… I’m 146 pounds. Lean and wiry with almost no body fat at all. I eat light but healthy, and have taken to running because weight lifting is boring and I am.. can’t be bothered to try and arrange tennis matches. But for awhile I was having a good time playing tennis with Nicholas Harding of Vermont, who was a sociopath (what they now call antisocial personality disorder) and generally crazy, delusional, a thief and grandiose narcissist and liar, so we had to kick him out. I wrote a bit about the new roommate…….
I’ve arranged my furniture so that my desk is over again facing the window, where I’m sitting now. My bed is next to me, the couch fitting perfectly into a space by the door, opposite from the window. This is possibly my final arrangment. It’s a fun thing to do in the winter. I don’t usually care so much about how my room looks, but when you spend enough time in here, and you get bored, you start having ideas. Having my desk back at the window where I can sit here and look out at my small yard and contemplate the meaning of things is definitely the way to go. The only major lifestyle change I’ve had to make as a result of this new arrangement is that my record player is now on the floor. Of course at first I thought this wouldn’t work, but you quickly get used to things, and actually it makes sense. Right now it’s one of my most precious possessions, so it being front and center in my room is actually exactly where it belongs. And I can lay on the floor, or sit on the bed, or sit lotus style, and listen with the headphones. The cable reaches long enough that I can do all of those.
Yesterday I bought three records. I walked on over to The Groove, to see what I could see. I had a feeling that they would have Nevermind. The last time I was there I scored In Utero. Well, guess what? They had it but it was overpriced, and I didn’t really want to listen to it anyways, yesterday. I wanted stuff that was not Nirvana.
Eh. This part is feeling too diary-esque for me. If I write all of that kind of stuff, I’ll run out of steam before we get anything good.
Since time and energy are limited, what are the best topics, for you and I, that I could write about?
Well, I have now volunteered twice removing invasive plant species from the local park. Our last session was attended by a crew of enthusiastic veterans, and so we did damage. The two main plants we removed were Bush honeysuckle and Chinese privet. And I’ll tell you about this.
The first time I volunteered to do this removal, my main focus was Chinese privet, and that’s what I learned to recognize. I came home and saw it everywhere in our yard, and then pulled 10 or 15 plants. This time around, I solidified my ID skills of privet, and can now ID Bush Honeysuckle, and as with privet, when I came home, I immediately spotted it in the yard. On my run yesterday, I saw it everywhere. Bush Honeysuckle is even worse – just as bad as privet. And it is everywhere. Both of them can get quite big. As big as small trees, 8 feet tall or taller. They’re large and proliferate rapidly, and at Shelby you could clearly see the effect that Bush Honeysuckle was having on the forest. By being a solid plant on the ground, vines are able to grow across the tops of the honeysuckle plants, and they fan out, and with the vines on top, suddenly where there is supposed to be clear, open forest, there is an impenetrable mass of vines and bushes and these small trees. Choking the forest. Not at all what it’s supposed to be.
So we tore it out, and it was hard work. Using handsaws, weed wrenches, and mattocks, which was the best and an incredible time. The mattock is like a pickaxe that you can use for mining an embedded plant out of the ground. You can pick in and get under the roots, and then pry the whole root ball out. There was one Bush Honeysuckle that Eve and I double-teamed, with me picking away the dirt surrounding the thick roots that were holding the plant down, and then Eve taking the loppers and severing them, one by one, until we could finally get the thing out of the ground. It was an enormous root ball, and we took a photo together, holding it like it was a prize fish we had just caught.
The ground was soft and wet because it had rained last night, so the conditions were perfect. You could pull most of the privets out of the ground, just rip them right out, with no tools, and I was running around ripping them up like I was playing whack-a-mole. I was really in hog heaven. It’s not often that you get to do demolition, to chop, hack, and destroy, which is at least for me, totally very fun, and then it was also a fun winter outdoors activity. It’s harder to find fun stuff to do outside in winter.
Running around the neighborhood, I now see privet and honeysuckle everywhere. Our crew leader CD Paddock had once said, “Once you see it, you’ll see it everywhere.” And it’s so true. What has been seen cannot be unseen. I think it is a clear and obvious metaphor or example of how knowledge opens our eyes and our minds to new things. These plants have been all around me, but I never noticed them or thought much about them. And now, suddenly, my brain is aware of them, and trained to spot them, and I see them everywhere, and think, you. You do not belong here.
Language is another example. Looking at the sake bottle on my desk, I see written on the front, むら。And I know now, of course that’s mura. But once upon a time I did not know.
I’ll take a break.
I’ve taken a break. I think that the writing bug has been scratched. That’s how it goes. But there is much much more to be written about. For what purpose? A good question. Well, does everything have to have a purpose? And, does everything have to have a purpose that you can understand? Many things are happening with purposes that you do not know about. Including your own actions.
That sounds like some Buddhism stuff right there. Pickles is currently barking like a savage maniac. What the hell has gotten him so triggered? Or her. Patrick must not be home or he would have yelled by now.
The Buddhism thoughts… I will say that I have had some Buddhist type thoughts in my head recently, and in my conversations with Rachel recently, I seem to have hit on some Buddhist principals principles. I can’t believe I just spelled that wrong.
In no particular order.. One thought I’ve been having recently is that, probably inspired by my reading The Republic, everyone has to come to knowledge for themselves, and only they themselves can unlock it. Even if it has already been discovered a thousand times before. You see this on Reddit, I saw just last night, people say things like, “Now that I’ve quit YouTube I find that I’m having more time for thoughts.” Or, now that I’ve stopped watching/reading the news I feel more peaceful. Or that connecting with nature makes you feel more at peace. This knowledge, about anything, in this case about mindfulness practice, is already out there. These thoughts have been thought many times before, and people, some people are already very aware. But there was a time when they learned that. Everyone must learn everything themselves.
Some things are instinct, and inborn, knowledge. But understanding on a higher level, grasping with the intellect, must be done on one’s own.
This is actually a serious statement because it means that you can’t just give someone knowledge, like you can give them $5. You can’t just give anybody knowledge. Not knowledge that they will really feel and thoroughly understand.
It is difficult and requires work. Possibly even certain mental capabilities that are beyond some people. But everyone is capable of learning.
I think what I really think is interesting about this fact is that it means that… Jesus that’s a long load of nothing. It means that even if someone were to attain true, perfect knowledge, if you could have such a thing, there is no guarantee that anyone else could ever have it again. No one else might ever be able to reach it, even with it all laid out and explained by the one who had achieved it.
Everyone is making a journey in their lives, of learning, of discovering, every person must do this, and it can’t be inserted or implanted in anyone else. Every person, every new human is a chance for a renewal of thought and a fresh outlook. That is the positive side of it. And then the negative side, if we can label it as such, would be that everyone has to suffer into the same knowledge, the “perfect, true” knowledge, over and over and over.
Let’s go for a walk.
I walked over to Walgreens and picked up a 9V battery to use with the pedal that my Dad gave me. The price tag wasn’t quite right, and I thought it would be $10.99, and it turned out to be….
Diary writing.
I reflected on mindfulness and Buddhist-type thinking on my small adventure just now.
I want to write more.. but I’m tired.
The sun is setting. I’m not ready. Well, bring on the night. Let’s get to creepin’.
Some creepin’ has been done.
Since I’ve been here, soon on arriving at 805B N 12th Street here in this duplex owned by Sir Michael Shields, I discovered the joy of candles. I never really knew about candles. That I myself could buy, light, and enjoy candles in my own home. I just didn’t know about that. I had never done it myself. I only write this because I have recently been enjoying candles to the fullest amount, now that it’s winter again.
I enjoy candles, records, books, and writing, and have a flip phone. I made one major step in moving away from the digital world, further distancing myself, when I decided to stop streaming music, and just go in on records. And I have found like I do whenever I have done these experiments that I am pleased with the results.
You know what’s really crazy? I think if people from the past could come here now and see Smosh sitting on the couch watching Tik Toks, see Taloya at the ovens with her phone out, all these people so disconnected and in phone world, they would be shocked. I know that people used to think that books were doing what phones do now, that people would be buried in books. There are always parallels. But think about this – how within a generation, something like 15 years, there is now a prevalent and normal, completely normal and commonplace behavior of being out in the world and holding a screen to your face and watching TV. Or being home and holding a screen to your face and watching TV. Or being 3 years old and holding a screen…. you get it. I guess I’ve really opted out. What’s also interesting about this is how things, how decisions feel to you at the time of you doing them. Going without a phone felt like a momentous decision, but only for me in the past, when I hadn’t done it. Living with a flip phone, with no smartphone, felt crazy and revolutionary. And now? I don’t think twice about it. I had all of these thoughts and revelations about it all, and now when people ask me I just say, “I like the flip phone better, basically.” Which is the truth. And that’s about it for me.
I’ve moved on. But I see those still enmeshed in phone life, smartphone life. Smartphones being very much a core part of their lives.
I am surprisingly popular. I am not writing this to stoke my own ego. I swear. You can never be sure that I’m telling the truth. I can’t even know. Of course I like being popular, but it’s not like Arianna Grande’s character in Wicked, who craves it. I don’t care either way. It just turns out that I am. And I’m writing about this because I am reminded about it almost every day. Like today, once again. Jessica commented once again that “Everybody likes Steven.” To which Stacy Hamilton quipped, “Not everybody.” And I said, “Who doesn’t like Steven? Let me find out.” Stacy said, “I’m just playing around!” Jessica says, “What are you gonna do? Give them that?” (This is some slang Jessica uses that means, you give them that, as in they say, Do you need that? And then hit them.) I said, “I’m gonna’ whoop on that heinie.” And that had her laughing. Not hard to make Jessica laugh. Just have to say something ridiculous like that. Chris K. said he misses me when I’m not there. He’s said it many times. Emily has said the same thing, that “I bring her joy.” Even Stacy has said, “He’s alright sometimes.” That’s a big deal. And I heard Jessica say today that Stacy has actually spoken the words, “I wish Steven were here.” When I’ve not been there, which, if true, is an absolutely incredible fact. I have had two work wives, Leah (my first wife), and now KB. The remarriage was instantaneous, more for KB’s sake than mine. Sorry Leah, but if you come back you will be my wife again instantly.
Leah may have been pushed out by Stacy. Having her hours reduced until it’s not worth it for her to stick around. That has been happening. Stacy does some scheming, I think. She has some presumptions and perceptions about the team that I don’t think are totally accurate. But she also has preferences, and one of her preferences is to minimize the fun and shennanigans. This is where I have been running into trouble, and recently much more frequently, because I have been recommended by my fellow maties to be an honorary shift supervisor. I wonder if Stacy groaned as she realized that I was the one to be picked. But Stacy has one great shortcoming, I would say, that she is too easily frazzled, and is too tightly wound. The stress is terrible for her. And just last week she said that she felt her heart beating in her chest. I was legitimately concerned for her life. She could straight up have a heart attack at Starbucks. She’s 62, overweight, a frequent imbiber of alcohol, and stressed out to the max. Me writing this is kind of showing me how possible this really is. I am often concerned for her health.
I’m tired but want to keep going. I was just lying in bed and my brain was firing away at a much faster clip than I can possibly keep up with in writing. I will continue with me being popular, an interesting point, and I bring it up because this whole Starbucks venture has been an interesting environment for me, a foil to learn about myself, which is always interesting to do, but also is a hot topic because I am a hot topic. You can tell I’m tired now because I’m writing all this and saying very little. I’m trying to say that being thrown into this new environment and mix of interesting personalities and learning how to work together and all that has shown me some things about myself, or clarified them or made them more obvious to me.
I write this as you know I am interested in human psychology and personality, and have enjoyed taking personality tests and etc., even when you know it’s all BS, because it’s fun.
People are notoriously bad at self-perception. So to have external comments made about your person and personality can be very useful, assuming that they are correct. For example, if you’re playing dumb, or acting a part for some reason, people will draw false conclusions about you, obviously. And all of these people, my coworkers, new friends and comrades, never knew me before. So they’re seeing me and taking me in with fresh eyes, as I am now.
You are lucky to be able to live this life. You have many luxuries. Sake. A guitar. Coffee. Blankets (kind of essential actually.) Books. Many luxuries. A camera. A laptop. Nice clothes. Pens and paper. A room with a view. No disease or illness. Records. Very lucky you are.
HAKUMUSU 
great content, liked the know lit for sure! —m